The History of Woman Suffrage Volume IV Part 43

Miss Anthony deals recklessly with years, apportioning them to her friends as liberally as Napoleon dealt out kingdoms and duchies to his brothers and other relations. Her example has strengthened me; you never would have had this next remark but for Miss Anthony: Thirty-five years ago I read a graduating essay. I knew I was doing an unwomanly thing, and in order to preserve what little womanliness I might have left, when I got up to read it I whispered the whole essay. I've quit that. Since I made up my mind to be heard, I have been heard.... A great progress of women has gone on and is going on. Men for the most part are manageable; women are the converts needed. When women have their minds made up to vote, it will be with them as it was with me about being heard....

This is a new era for woman. If the larger sphere now open to her is not a new discovery, it is at least a new testament. The day will come that people will look back with shame on the time when brains and virtue were shut away from the ballot-box, if they belonged to a woman....

Miss Anna Caulfield (Mich.) pointed out The Achievements of Woman in Art. Mrs. May Wright Sewall (Ind.) spoke eloquently on The True Civilization of the World, saying in part:

In the new civilization the sense of personal responsibility is strong; it respects the child's individuality and also recognizes the unity of all educational agencies--kindergarten, school, college and university.

There is also a new theology, in which individual conscience is subst.i.tuted for the dictates of authority, and which distinguishes between metaphysical doctrine and practical principle. It seeks the higher unity, all embracing.

The new political economy recognizes the right of the individual, and the body politic as composed of units, each one of which must be respected. Its whole effort is to preserve the rights of employers and to give equal recognition to the employed; to unify all those cla.s.ses that have heretofore been kept divided.

The new civilization results from all these. The difficulties in realizing this perfect unit arise from selfishness. We have long recognized that individual selfishness is a defect, but national selfishness has been for a long time extolled under the name of patriotism, and has gone on cleaving great chasms between different peoples. In the new civilization the individual will recognize himself at his best in his relation to the whole. The different professions will recognize that what each contributes bears but a small ratio to what each receives from the rest. The different nationalities will recognize their respective dignities in just the proportion in which the whole must transcend any part. Then humanity will exceed national feeling and the unity of the race will exalt the dignity of the individual.

The resolution presented by Mrs. Sewall, member for the United States of the International Peace Union, rejoicing over the approaching Peace Conference at The Hague and a.s.suring the commissioners from the United States of the sympathy of the women of this country, was unanimously adopted.

The Rev. Anna Howard Shaw, national vice-president, whose childhood and early girlhood had been spent in Michigan, closed the Sat.u.r.day evening meeting with a tender address on Working Partners, a graphic description of the pioneer days of this State and the hards.h.i.+ps of its women, during which she said: "Women have been faithful partners and have done their full share of the work. A gentleman opposed to their enfranchis.e.m.e.nt once said to me, 'Women have never produced anything of any value to the world.' I told him the chief product of the women had been the men, and left it to him to decide whether the product was of any value. Is it said that women must not vote because they can not bear arms? Why, women's arms have borne all the arm-bearers of the world. We have no antique art in America, but we have antique laws. We do not look back to the antiquity of the world, but to the babyhood of the world. Who would think of calling a new-born infant antique? Yet laws made in the babyhood of the world are in this day of its manhood quoted for our guidance. Much has been said lately about 'the white man's burden', but the white man will never have a heavier burden to take up than himself."

Twelve churches offered their pulpits, which were filled by the women speakers Sunday morning.[117] The regular convention services were held Sunday afternoon in the St. Cecilia building, a large audience being present. The Rev. Antoinette Brown Blackwell led the devotional exercises, and the Rev. Florence Kollock Crooker gave the sermon from the text: "Whether one member suffers, all the members suffer with it; or one member be honored, all the members rejoice with it." Afterwards Mrs. Sewall spoke on the coming Peace Congress at The Hague and, on motion of Melvin A. Root, a resolution was adopted that on May 15, the opening day of the congress, the women of our country a.s.semble in public and send to it the voice of women in favor of peace.

A touching letter from Mrs. Elizabeth Cady Stanton was read by Miss Anthony during the convention, in which she said: "We seem to be pariahs alike in the visible and the invisible world, with no foothold anywhere, though by every principle of government and religion we should have an equal place on this planet. We do not hold the ignorant cla.s.s of men responsible for these outrages against women, but rather the published opinions of men in high positions, judges, bishops, presidents of colleges, editors, novelists and poets--all taught by the common and civil law. It is a sad reflection that the chains of woman's bondage have been forged by her own sires and sons. Every man who is not for us in this prolonged struggle for liberty is responsible for the present degradation of the mothers of the race. It is pitiful to see how few men ever have made our cause their own, but while leaving us to fight our battle alone, they have been unsparing in their criticism of every failure. Of all the battles for liberty in the long past, woman only has been left to fight her own, without help and with all the powers of earth and heaven, human and divine, arrayed against her."

Monday evening Mrs. Harriet Taylor Upton, national treasurer, told of An Ohio Woman's Experience as Member of a School Board. She gave a lively account of her own nomination and election in Warren, and said in concluding: "It was not a war of women against men, but of liberalism against conservatism, of principle against prejudice, of the new against the old. It does not take any more time to clean up a schoolhouse and keep out scarlet fever than it does to nurse the children through the scarlet fever."

Mrs. Flora Beadle Renkes, School Commissioner of Barry County, Mich., described Some Phases of Public School Work. She advocated industrial and moral as well as intellectual training and all of this equally for both s.e.xes.

Mrs. Minerva Welch, in considering Woman's Possibilities, said: "To my mind it is given to woman to develop the greatest possibilities in all the world. She can direct the character of generations. If woman ever gains the place G.o.d intended her to have it must be through the mother element. In Denver we have organized women's clubs for the study of art, literature and political science. We have learned to fraternize.

Men have found that women bring their moral influence into politics, and the men also know that they must look to their own morals if they want office. Many questions have been sent to our State asking about the new conditions. Woman suffrage has proved a success, and the women can stand with heads erect, shoulder to shoulder with any one, knowing that they are full, free citizens of the State of Colorado and of the United States."

Miss Anthony then, by special request, gave a recital of all the facts connected with her arrest, trial and conviction for voting in 1872.

Miss Shaw introduced her as a criminal, and Miss Anthony retorted, "Yes, a criminal out of jail, just like a good many of the brethren."

With marvelous power she recalled all the details of that dramatic episode.

Mrs. Abigail Scott Duniway (Ore.) gave an address on How to Win the Ballot, containing much sound sense. It was published in full by the Grand Rapids _Democrat_. Mrs. Evelyn H. Belden, president of the Iowa Equal Suffrage a.s.sociation, spoke on Women and War, saying:

Did you ever have to live with heroes--with men who have survived the hards.h.i.+ps and dangers of war? One of the reasons for my mildness in public is that I have to be mild at home. I live with the heroes of two wars. The elder put down the rebellion--so he tells me. The younger, for whom I am responsible, has accomplished an even more perilous feat; he met in mortal combat every day for six months the product of the commissary department of our late war. He is still alive, but "kicking"--and so is his mother!

Note that there were no women on the War Investigating Commission. Brutal officers, incompetent quartermasters and ignorant doctors were tried before a jury of their peers. Every department which was conducted without the help of women has been for months writhing under the probe of an official investigation, and is still writhing under the lash of public opinion.

When the war broke out, the women of Iowa, with the suffragists at their head, cheerfully consecrated themselves to the service of a State which does not recognize them as the equals of their own boys. I have one old trunk that made six trips to Chickamauga Park, filled with delicacies for the soldiers. About August I made up my mind to go and see things for myself. My husband was told it was no place for a woman there among 60,000 men and 1,500 animals; but he had business at home which he did not think I could attend to, and he thought I could go to Chickamauga just as well as he....

If there had been women on the commission, would they have pitched the camp five miles from water? Or provided only one horse and one mule to bring the water for two companies? Or ordered the soldiers to filter and boil their drinking water, without furnis.h.i.+ng any filters or any vessels to boil it in? It is said that suffragists do not know how to keep house. If so, the men who managed the war must all be suffragists.

But Clara Barton and the women nurses have won golden opinions from every one. If any man had given a t.i.the of what Helen Gould did, he could have had any office in the gift of the administration. So could she, if she had been a voter. She might even have been Secretary of War.

We raise our sons to die not for their country--no woman grudges her sons to her country--but to die unnecessarily of disease and neglect, because of red tape....

History furnishes no parallel to the women of America during the last year's war. They were fully alive to its issues, intelligently conversant with its causes, its purposes and possibilities; they studied camp locations, conditions and military rules; and through the hand the heart found constant expression, as many a company of grateful boys can testify. The experience of this war ought to have effectually destroyed the last trace of mediaeval sentiment concerning the propriety of women mixing in the affairs of government, and also the last shadow of doubt as to the expediency of recognizing them as voters.

Mrs. Josephine K. Henry (Ky.) made an address sparkling with the epigrams for which she was noted, ent.i.tled A Plea for the Ballot:

....The light and the eager interest in the faces of American women show that they are going somewhere; and when women have started for somewhere, they are harder to head off than a comet.... All roads for women lead to suffrage, even if they do not know it. We are Daughters of Evolution, and who can stop old Dame Evolution?... We must live up to our principles, or, as a nation, we are not going to live at all. Then it will be time for Liberty to throw down her torch, and go out of the enlightening business.... "Woman's sphere"--these are the two hardest-worked words in the dictionary.... They call in the mental and moral wreckage of foreign nations to help rule us. A man was asked, "How are you going to vote on the const.i.tution?" He answered: "My const.i.tution's mighty poorly; my mother was feeble before me."

There is deep tragedy in giving such men control of the lives and property of American women.... There is not so much the matter with the U. S. Const.i.tution as with the const.i.tutions of some of our statesmen.... It is not an expansion of territory that we need so much as an expansion of justice to our own women....

American men have had a hard struggle for their own liberty, and some of them are afraid there will not be liberty enough to go around.... What relation is woman to the State? She is a very poor relation, yet her tax-money is demanded promptly.

Dr. Mary H. Barker Bates, of the Denver School Board, discussed Our Gains and Our Losses, and said in closing: "We have learned that in politics we must have a machine, only it should be used for good government, not for corruption. Make your machine as perfect as you can, without a flaw in it anywhere, and then use it for good ends."

Mrs. Mary B. Clay (Ky.) gave a careful survey of conditions resulting from The Removal of Industries from the Home, which had forced woman to follow them and made her an industrial factor in the outside world.

Miss Griffin being again called on told these anecdotes:

In my home in Alabama there are four educated women. My father has pa.s.sed away. My sisters are widows and I am an old maid. We have as our gardener a negro boy twenty-three years old. When he came to us he said that he had been in the Second Reader for ten years, but on election day he goes over and votes to represent our family. If we complain of having no vote on the expenditure of our tax-money, we are told we must "influence" men; in other words, we must influence that gardener. But when we start to do so, and ask him how he means to vote, he says he doesn't know yet, because he hasn't seen "Uncle Peter," the colored minister.

In my section men are chivalric and say, "Don't you know that you shall have everything you ask as ladies? Don't you know that we are your natural protectors?" But what is a woman afraid of on a lonely road after dark? The bears and wolves are all gone; there is nothing to be afraid of now but our natural protectors.

On the islands off our coast there was a large population that could not read or write. A missionary-spirited woman went there to help educate them. After awhile she was made a member of the school board, which consisted of a few white men and more negroes. The president of the board, a colored man, was disgusted at the elevation of a woman to that dignity, and when she was sworn in he resigned, saying, "Now you've swore her in, you've got to swear me out; I'm not going to sit on no board with no woman."

During the convention Miss Anthony made an earnest appeal for co-operation in the equal suffrage work, saying: "Why is it the duty of the little handful on this platform to be talking and working for the enfranchis.e.m.e.nt of women any more than that of all of you who sit here to-night? Every woman can do something for the cause. She who is true to it at her own fireside, who speaks the right word to her guests, to her children and her neighbors' children, does an educational work as valuable as that of the woman who speaks from the platform." She also urged a wider reading of the equal rights papers, the _Woman's Journal_, _Tribune_, _Standard_, _Wisconsin Citizen_, etc., and suffrage pamphlets and leaflets. She defended herself against the accusation of abusing the men, saying, "We have not been fighting the 'male' citizen anywhere but in the statute books."

Eighty-seven delegates representing twenty-two States were present at this convention. The treasurer reported the receipts of the past year to be $14,020. Mrs. Chapman Catt, chairman of the Organization Committee, related the work done by the suffrage organizations in behalf of the Spanish-American War. She described also the efforts made to obtain suffrage for women in the new const.i.tution of Louisiana the preceding year, which resulted in securing the franchise for taxpaying women on all matters submitted to taxpayers. The work in different States and Territories, especially in Arizona and Oklahoma, was sketched in detail, and will be found in their respective chapters.

In concluding her report as chairman of the Legislative Committee, Mrs. Blake called attention to the more hopeful character of this record as compared to that of last year, and urged upon all State presidents the importance of having some one to represent the interests of women constantly at their capitals during the legislative sessions, not only to secure favorable legislation but to prevent that inimical to their interests, citing the case of New Mexico, where a law which infringes on the right of dower was recently pa.s.sed without the knowledge of women.

Mrs. Elnora M. Babc.o.c.k (N. Y.) was made chairman of National Press Work, with power to appoint a chairman in each State. The customary telegram of congratulation and appreciation was sent to the honorary president, Mrs. Stanton. Mrs. Eliza Wright Osborne (N. Y.) was appointed fraternal delegate to the International Council of Women to meet in London in June. Greetings were received through fraternal delegates, Mrs. Jessie R. Denney, from the Ancient Order of United Workingmen, and Mrs. Emma A. Wheeler from the Canadian W. C. T. U. The letter to Miss Anthony from its president, Mrs. Annie O. Rutherford, said: "A vigorous campaign is being carried on in every Province in favor of equal suffrage, with fair hope of success in most of them. We wish for your convention a most successful issue, and that your life, whose grand pioneer work has made it easy for those who follow after, may be spared many years yet to help broaden the path and uplift the cause of humanity." Many letters and telegrams were received from State suffrage a.s.sociations and from individuals. Mrs. Belva A.

Lockwood (D. C.) wrote: "As a delegate to the ninth annual convention of the International League of Press Clubs just held in Baltimore, I succeeded in gaining recognition on equal terms for women journalists in the s.p.a.ce to be allotted to men journalists in the Exposition at Paris in 1900."

A lively discussion was caused by a resolution offered by Mrs. Lottie Wilson Jackson, a delegate from Michigan, so light-complexioned as hardly to suggest a tincture of African blood, that "colored women ought not be compelled to ride in smoking cars, and that suitable accommodations should be provided for them." It was finally tabled as being outside the province of the convention.[118]

The memorial resolutions were presented by the Rev. Antoinette Brown Blackwell, who said: "These tributes are largely to older men and women with whom I was a.s.sociated long ago and it is a pleasure to recall their n.o.ble services to humanity in times when they and their work were far more unpopular than to-day. There are twenty-five on my list, yet I think there was only one of the entire number who was not more than fifty years old, and most of them reached on toward the eighties and nineties. All were earnest advocates of equal suffrage, but there were kindred causes to which most of them were also devoted.... Laura P. Haviland spent seventy years of her life in Michigan, the last five here in Grand Rapids. At one time she a.s.sumed the care of nine orphan children; at another, during the Civil War she was the active agent who freed from prison a large number of Union soldiers held upon false charges. She labored for every good cause and was a simple Quaker in religion and life....

"Parker Pillsbury of New Hamps.h.i.+re, who died last year, aged 88, known as a life-long worker for the oppressed before the Civil War, gave much of his energy to the cause of anti-slavery. When that n.o.ble philanthropy was split in two throughout its whole length because one-half would not let women serve on committees with men or raise their voices publicly for those who were dumb and helpless, Parker Pillsbury stood by the side of Abby Kelly and the Grimke sisters. His terse, characteristic, uncompromising language, his cheerful braving of prejudice, his sympathetic claim for justice to womanhood, made him one of the n.o.blest of men....

"In the long and many-sided history of the woman's cause, Mrs. Matilda Joslyn Gage made a deep and lasting mark. I recall her as she came first upon our platform at the Syracuse Woman's Rights Convention in 1852, a young mother of two children, yet with a heart also for a wider cause. Wendell Phillips said of her then, 'She came to us an unknown woman. She leaves us a co-worker whose reputation is established.' ...

"The Hon. Nelson W. Dingley was able officially to help our movement with efficient good-will. His vote was recorded for the admission of States with a woman suffrage const.i.tution."

Mrs. Blackwell paid personal tribute to most of those who had pa.s.sed away, and Mrs. Clara Bewick Colby continued the memorial, speaking at length of the splendid work of Mrs. Gage; of Mrs. Flora M. Kimball and Mrs. Abigail Bush, of California--but early Eastern pioneers; Mrs.

Sarah M. Kimball of Utah; Mrs. Frances Bagley and Dr. Charlotte Levanway of Michigan; and a long list of men and women in various States who had done their part in aiding the cause of equal suffrage.

She concluded with eloquent words of appreciation of the services of Robert Purvis of Philadelphia, and presented the following resolutions sent by Mrs. Stanton:

During the period of reconstruction, the popular cry was, "This is the negro's hour," and Republicans and Abolitionists alike insisted that woman's claim to the suffrage must be held in abeyance until the negro was safe beyond peradventure.

Distinguished politicians, lawyers and congressmen declared that woman as well as the negro was enfranchised by the Fourteenth Amendment, yet reformers and politicians denounced those women who would not keep silent, while the Republican and anti-slavery press ignored their demands altogether. In this dark hour of woman's struggle, forsaken by all those who once recognized her civil and political rights, two n.o.ble men steadfastly maintained that it was not only woman's right but her duty to push her claims while the const.i.tutional door was open and the rights of citizens in a republic were under discussion; therefore,

_Resolved_, That women owe a debt of grat.i.tude to Robert Purvis and Parker Pillsbury for their fearless advocacy of our cause, when to do so was considered to be treason to a great party measure, involving life and liberty for the colored race.

_Resolved_, That in the death of men of such exalted virtue, true to principle under the most trying circ.u.mstances, sacrificing the ties of friends.h.i.+p and the respect of their compeers, they are conspicuous as the moral heroes of the nineteenth century.

The memorial service was closed with prayer by the Rev. Anna Howard Shaw, who voiced the grat.i.tude for the inspiration of such lives as these and the hope that this generation might carry the work on to its full fruition.

The keynote to the speeches and action of this convention was the status of women in our new possessions. At a preliminary meeting of the Business Committee, held in the home of Mrs. Chapman Catt at Bensonhurst-by-the-Sea, N. Y., Jan. 2, 1899, the following "open letter" had been prepared and sent to every member of Congress: